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Holy Week resources and reflections

U.S. torture programs: never again

If we have any hope of being a light upon a hill in this new decade, Christians in our country must insure that we will never again countenance the torture of war criminals.

The disregard of the Geneva Convention in the name of preventing terrorism in the past decade appeared to be coming to an end when, in January 2009, newly-inaugurated President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order to that effect. But, the administration’s record has been mixed.

The Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross, leaked last April, detailed the forms of torture to which terrorist suspects had been subjected. Yet the Obama administration has resisted calls for investigation and prosecution. And, invoking “state secrecy,” it has shielded illegal spying programs from judicial review.

A report, written by the CIA’s inspector general, was released this past August, but roughly one-third was blacked out. It revealed that prisoners held in secret detention were subjected illegally to mock executions and terrorized with electric drills. Threats were made that their children would be tortured and their mothers raped. And what was blacked out?

 An encouraging sign came when current Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special prosecutor. However, the prosecutor’s mandate appears to be severely limited, attention being directed down the chain of command, but not up.

The Special Task Force created by the president’s Executive Orders issued its report, concluding that the Army Field Manual provides adequate guidance for military and other interrogators. It fails to state that Appendix M of the Field Manual allows abusive techniques that amount to torture, especially when used in combination. The Task Force also calls for regulating the use of “renditions,” not eliminating them.   

And, the recent announcement by the White House of plans to transfer detainees to the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois raises the hope that the prison in Guantanamo Bay will close, but not any time soon, due to the inevitable partisan wrangling in Congress.

What’s most disturbing in all of this is the stunning way that a nation that would not countenance such treatment of prisoners has come to rationalize such actions. Which political party is most supportive? The one that is widely seen as friendly toward Christians. And what of the Christians themselves? A Pew survey released last summer, reports that, among those who attend church regularly, 54 percent responded that torture could be “justified.” By contrast, torture was said to be rarely or never justified by a majority of those who do not attend church regularly.

Yes, Richard Cheney can claim that the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” has proven effective. But the overwhelming verdict of professional interrogators is that it does not. As former Marine Corps Commandant Charles Krulak and former CENTCOM Commander-in-Chief Joseph Hoar wrote on Sept. 11, 2009, “Torture is as likely to produce lies as the truth.”

Then again, even if abusive practices were effective, they would still be indefensible. We Christians long have concluded that slavery, rape, genocide, and torture can never be justified. To allow our democratic society to practice such evil is to descend to the level of the regimes we purport to oppose. Let us begin this new decade with a clear resolve to ensure that our country will never resort to torture again.

 

GEORGE HUNSINGER is founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.  

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